Texas Terror

"Texas Terror" is better than a lot of the Wayne Lonestar Productions. In this one, Wayne gets a chance to expand on his usual innocent-tough guy persona. After an incident where his friend gets shot, a distraught Wayne quits his job as sheriff. He falls apart and grows a beard and looks like he's halfway towards turning into a Gabby Hayes, gruff-old- goat character. He then does another nice-turn-around to get back to being the hero. Wayne is less stiff and actually looks interested in the scenes he's in. Its really one of his best early performances.

Besides Wayne getting to play a more multi-dimensional character, there's a great plot twist at the end. It is Wayne's Indian friends who come charging on horseback to the rescue. It is nice to see a 1935 movie where the Indians are truly the good guys and heroes in the tale.

There's an hilarious milking contest in the middle. The losing milker looks exactly like the Pappy Yokum character from Li'l Abner. He was probably the prototype.

Overall, this Wayne Lonestars becomes more interesting as it goes along. This is not something you can say about some others.

This B-western begins with John Wayne as a town's sheriff. However, following a robbery, Wayen chases the baddies and thinks he's accidentally shot and killed an old friend--not knowing that the leader of the gang actually killed the man. Saddened by the death, he decides to quit the job and become a recluse...for a while. Eventually, he gets his act together and eventually unravels the mystery--saving the day.

Compared to other Wayne films of the era, this one is about average--entertaining but with a few problems here and there. The one big problem for me was the use of stunts--which were usually the highpoint of these films. Instead of staging new stunts, they sloppily took clips from other Wayne films and stuck them in--less than seamlessly. For example, though the grass is short and they are in a semi-wooded area, when baddies are shot, they fall in very high grass with no trees about them! Sloppy...and obviously recycled. Still, the rest of the film is breezy light entertainment--what you'd expect from such an unpretentious film.

A couple things to look for is a particularly bad job of acting and directing when the heroin enters the film. She talks directly to the camera and her delivery is less than magical...in fact, it's craptastic. Also, look for Gabby Hayes as the new sheriff. Unlike many of his other western roles, here he wears his dentures and sounds very erudite--without that 'old coot' voice you usually expect from him. This isn't too surprising, as in these Wayne westerns, Hayes experimented a lot with his characters--even sometimes playing bad guys or action heroes...of sorts.

John Wayne is the local sheriff and in his attempt to stop some would be robbers, he believes that he has killed his best friend,, he is very distraught and winds up quitting his job, and becoming a hired ranch hand in the desert, in the meantime , he helps some Indians with their day to life and problems,, George "Gabby Hayes,, plays the old sheriff , who now has to take the job of sheriff since Wayne quit.. Leroy Mason plays the villain as usual, and does a pretty good job with it. as the film moves on , one of the people he is helping a young girl, who he knows very well is the daughter of his friend,, the man who he believes he has killed, will she find out that he had something to do with it,, in the meantime he has to stop some horse thieves, and eventually it will all lead back to who shot his best friend,, and interesting watch,, not a great western,, but not a bad one either,, middle of the road , maybe a little better.

Wayne portrays a Texas sheriff at around the turn of the 20th century who is framed for the murder of his best friend. His best friends daughter finds out about what is believed to be The Sherriff's brutal act, yet Wayne finds out the truth and brings the real killers to justice. Kudos to the Duke!

Under the mistaken belief that he killed his best friend, John Wayne quits his job as sheriff and leaves town to become a desert tramp. A year later, he cleans up his act in order to help his friend's daughter with the horse ranch she inherited. The two fall in love but the real murderer plans on ruining the ranch in order to take her away!

Texas Terror is a likable entry in Lone Star's series of Saturday matinée westerns starring Wayne. It has a well-written script with some decent melodrama to go along with the action and has one of the better love stories of the series.

Near the beginning, this gives the viewer an irresistible chance to get a look at Wayne in a full beard and dirty clothes. That's certainly something I've never seen before.